1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a position detector, a position detecting method and an analyzer for detecting a position of liquid held in a vessel.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, the analyzer analyzes constituent concentration or the like of a specimen by measuring optical characteristics of the liquid held in a reaction vessel (for example, see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-116213).
In the analyzer, when a capacity of the reaction vessel to be used becomes as small as a few nanoliters (nL) to several tens of microliters (μL), an opening through which liquid such as a reagent and a specimen is dispensed becomes relatively narrow relative to the reaction vessel due to downsizing and an effect of surface tension of the liquid becomes extremely large. Therefore, when using the downsized reaction vessel, there has been a case in which in the reaction vessel, the liquid such as the reagent and the specimen is held in the vicinity of the opening and is not introduced to the bottom portion thereof, thus making it impossible to know at which position of the reaction vessel the liquid exists.